


We see him as he moved

by Aeshna etonensis (GMWWemyss)



Series: Modest Proposals [4]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: All I Want For Christmas Is Love Actually, Christmas, Christmas Fluff, Cricket, F/M, Future Fic, Gen, Kid Fic, M/M, The Kinks, Village life, racism and bigotry from a few passing villains, the Peak District
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-03-02 05:43:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2801687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GMWWemyss/pseuds/Aeshna%20etonensis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Giselle's challenge remains irresistible, and I can resist anything save temptation. Wherefore, more of this happy fluffy business.</p><p>Or, in which Zayn, Liam, and the sprogs mark several post-Modest Crimbos with love and family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We see him as he moved

 

* * *

 

> We know him now: all narrow jealousies  
>  Are silent; and we see him as he moved,  
>  How modest, kindly, all-accomplished, wise,  
>  With what sublime repression of himself,  
>  And in what limits, and how tenderly....
> 
> – Tennyson

* * *

1.

They were walking back from the fire station – the newly refurbished Longnor Community Fire Station – after a banquet, in this Advent season, in aid of … Zayn really couldn’t quite recall, not owing to his having looked upon the wine when it was red (or any other colour, for that matter), but because there were so many good causes (and he and Liam were patrons of every last one of ’em, it seemed); and his mind was rather in any case upon the children. It was a cold, crisp night – by the end of the week, there was every chance of what the OAPs even now insistently called ‘a few degrees of frost’ – but clear, so far, although Moorlands weather could no more be counted on than could Louis Tomlinson’s moods … even at their present, ostensibly mature ages.

That he and Liam were, or had been, _at_ a banquet for charidee _at_ Longnor CFS was hardly worth remarking. Zayn knew that, if ever they were to take a long hiatus – One Direction, like the Stones, were _never_ going to retire, of course: Liam had already long since dubbed their future selves ‘OAP Direction’ – but, if ever they were to be in one place for two years running (and that place should unquestionably be Bent Clough Farm), Liam should insist on burnishing anew the training and certification he had so proudly achieved some years prior, and signing on as a retained firefighter. (As always, the vision of Liam in uniform distracted Zayn for a good few paces and required an effortful reboot of his brain.) The children were old enough now, even wee Karen; it was simply a matter of _time_ – and presence. As matters stood, naturally, Liam was a member of the Fire and Rescue Authority, and its Equality and Diversity Panel, in any case; just as Zayn had found himself, rather to his own wonderment, on the Police and Crime Panel for Staffs Police: Liam in his capacity as County councillor (it was his turn) and Zayn as his turn-and-turn-about successor as a District councillor for Staffordshire Moorlands. They were awaiting, with some trepidation, the inevitable day when they’d be tapped and pricked out as Deputy Lieutenants, a day, they knew, which could not much longer be delayed. (Both had stood as regional Independents, naturally: neither regarded any of the political parties in the realm as being something a decent person could join, and each knew himself well advised not to say so too loudly. As Zayn for one well knew, his mum and at least one of his bandmates regarded Labour as the only party one could support in good conscience, whilst his father and at least one of his uncles almost certainly, if surreptitiously, voted for the Tories every time – and he’d not wager against Geoff Payne’s quietly doing the same. Niall, predictably, had cackled, and made the remarkably unhelpful suggestion they tell people they belonged to Fine Gael, or Fianna Fáil, he wasn’t fussed, but Zayn really didn’t need more stick than he got already.)

Not that these matters were in Zayn’s mind at the time, either. He was – it is worth repeating – thinking about the children, as usual. Joe and Molly were both at Repton, now: he and Liam had resisted, at first, the whole idea, trusting the sprogs to the very good C of E Voluntary Aided Schools in the area, despite the urgings of (between their post-Modest management and neighbours) two dukes and the younger brother of a third; but when teachers, governors, and the Rector had all admitted that, much as they wished the children to remain, Yusuf and Mariam were at once too clever and too talented for village schools, Zayn and Liam had given way. Although they _had_ refused to gratify Charles, Stoker, and Eddie by shipping Molly off to Roedean or Cheltenham Ladies’ and Joe to bloody _Eton._ And Karen had since started at Foremarke Hall, the prepper that was Repton’s main feeder, as a matter of course.

It had been the right choice, reflected Zayn. The offspring were thriving (Molly had flourished since arriving at The Garden and was blossoming into a complete Garden girl): Joe thrived in his own determined (pigheaded, Payne-ful) way (‘stubborn as a Malik’, countered Liam, always), although not just now, this being the period he most detested every year: the terms – Michaelmas and Lent – without cricket, or even football as a pale Autumnal substitute in the latter half of Michaelmas Term (young Joe was not, nor did he wish to be, on the longer-playing football 1st  XI, with its year-round fixtures: an interference with cricket he was not prepared to tolerate). Joe was already legend at Latham House, and a possible England career was prophesied for him (Zayn was proud, of course, but he _did_ rather wish that his son was not so wholly and single-mindedly sporty, and might upon occasion read a book or do his revisions … Joe’s character, maintained Zayn, was all Liam, save for this: there were innumerable choristers at Repton, even in Joe’s own House: Lathamites tended to run to talent and a hunger for stardom, possibly because they’d a House chef even Niall approved, to sate lesser schoolboy hungers: but Joe, alas, could not have carried a tune in a hod, really, it was painful...).

With such thoughts, anchored by Liam’s strong hand in his as they walked towards their waiting car, Zayn was wholly occupied: so much so as not to hear the first challenge from the large, bleary-eyed, bellicose man on the pavement, flown in insolence and lager.

‘– to you! You’re that Paki poof from that band, you are, you and your bum-chum there!’

Liam was clearly struggling not to forget his position and his responsibilities, and wallop the boozy bigot into a bleeding pile of meat.

Just as well he didn’t. Sergeant Whitesmith of the Waterhouses Rural NPT, with his shaven head and bulging muscles, had been at the charity do also, as had the Commander of the Moorlands LPT, that dour son of Aberdeen in exile, Inspector Angus Livingstone, who had succeeded Inspector Hancock some years prior; and they were only a few paces behind.

‘Problem, Cllr Malik? Cllr Payne?’

Zayn snorted. ‘Just a belligerent drunk. All gob and no trousers. Not worth the trouble of giving him in charge, Sergeant.’

‘Ye’ll pardon my dissent, Cllr Malik,’ said Insp Livingstone. ‘I’m no’ having any p’und-shop beegots in _my_ manor. You, sunshine, don’t _move,_ you’re nicked.’ Sgt Whitesmith gave the drunken man the full ‘just you come along o’ me, me bucko’ treatment. ‘Noo,’ said the Inspector, ‘whit’s your name, mon? I am a police officer, George Shutt, and I arrest ye, firstly, in that ye....’

Liam released a long breath. ‘Probably unwise of him to do something that daft to a couple of JPs, in the presence of two coppers.’

‘... may harrrm your defence if ye do no’ mention when questioned something which ye later rely on in court. Anything ye do say may be given in evidence....’

‘Yeah,’ sighed Zayn, wearily. ‘Good thing school doesn’t break up until Friday.’ He knew it was futile, but he hoped, all the same, that the children never encountered this sort of thing. Mind, he’d hoped this sort of thing should have ceased happening before he’d turned five-and-twenty, and that hadn’t happened, either.

Liam nodded. ‘Silly bugger. “Pak” is … it means “pure”, doesn’t it. Compliment, really. And “poof” and “bum-chum” don’t really mean the same thing as _husband_. Thicker than I am, that one, honestly.’

Zayn laughed through his dismay. ‘You’re not thick, love. You know just what to say, like. Always.’

‘Oh, I’m terrible with words, I am. But just you let me get you home, and I’ll prove again I’m bostin’ with _actions_.’

Zayn held him tightly for a moment. ‘That you are. Let’s go home, and you can make me feel _all_ better.’

Liam gave him what he even now, poor lad, thought a wink. ‘Nothing I like better, love. C’mon, then.’

* * *

2.

Liam perfectly well knew that Zayn’s preferred response to cold weather – to any noticeable weather at all, really – was to curl up (preferably _on_ Liam), near the fire, with a book. Liam also perfectly well knew that the Peak, with its dramatic scenery, was notorious for two things in addition to its oft-dramatic weather: dramatic heights, and (often equally dramatic) water. To both of which – as Liam perfectly well knew – Zayn was even now allergic, although he _could_ now swim sufficiently as not to drown in a bath. And Liam perfectly well knew that Zayn considered, indulgently and lovingly, that his husband, their children, and their band-mates (and _their_ children) were all barking mad: so barking they shared a borough with Dagenham, 150 miles away and more in London town.

Liam also perfectly well knew that Zayn, being indulgent and loving, lovingly indulged their several lunacies.

That Louis ‘I’ll never leave the fleshpots of London’ Tomlinson had found himself with a Cheshire pied-à-terre in Alderley Edge was, of course, only to be expected, owing to the inwardness of one Harry Styles – and the utter besottedness of both when it came to their children, Angelica, Troy – who insisted nowadays on being called by half his second name, as ‘Rob’ – and Joan, who (blessedly) no longer got copiously sick in any moving vehicle in which she found herself. That Niall and his two – Maeve and Eoin, and their mum on occasion (they had not separated, let alone divorced, but she always felt, despite all the good will and best efforts in the world on the part of all concerned, somehow excluded when the band-mates forgathered once more: she had, after all, poor dear, not been a part of it from the off, and it was a difficult circle to break into) – that Niall and the Horanlets had similarly found a retreat nearby was no surprise, any more than it was a surprise that all of the band-mates had kept London flats near to one another. Niall protested all along that he’d chosen Combs, near Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbs, for the same reasons he lived in Mount Temple when ‘home’ in County Westmeath: for the golf. Liam perfectly well knew that _that_ was balls.

Liam perfectly well knew, too, that his idea of fun: climbing, hiking, swimming, fell-running: which he had passed on to the children, struck Zayn as utterly lunatic, although, as Joe’s Housemaster at Repton actually ran _barefoot_ in all weathers, Liam thought himself reasonably sane when judged against that standard.

For all that, Liam was always ready to admit that the curious tradition which had somehow grown up as marking the beginning of the Christmas season – weather permitting – for the three families, _was_ a bit mad. (As Haz and The Tommo had been the ones to conceive it, in an anomalously mild Winter, this was hardly surprising, any more than was Niall’s happy acquiescence in the prospect of a _meal_.) A joint Winter picnic, by the old packhorse bridge on the falls of the River Dane where Cheshire, Derbyshire, and Staffordshire meet (dramatic heights, dramatic water), had its merits (not least that it averted the descent of Horans and Tomlinson-Styleses upon Bent Clough Farm, which they were commonly not inclined, once ensconced, to _leave_ until the food ran low), but, even in good years when the weather at Three Shires Head of a First Sunday in Advent was not too bitter and the A53 was open and the roads clear to Flash or Hollinsclough, it did tend to be a trifle chilly. The children, well bundled-up, tended to enjoy the sharpness of coming Winter (aided by lashings of cocoa, winter-warmer soups, and other hot food); Zayn, however, tended to be very obviously _not_ complaining audibly of cold. In a marked and unmistakeable manner.

Then again, as Liam perfectly well knew, the both of them enjoyed few things more than arriving home after, getting the children, exhausted by outdoor play, to bed, and letting Liam warm Zayn up by such means as seemed good to them both.

Scorchingly.

* * *

3.

As a rule, Liam made a point of asking, always, how things had gone, just as Zayn did for him, despite their both commonly knowing the answer (being attuned wholly to one another) and quite likely the cause (having long been turn-and-turn-about in rotations in service).

As a rule, Liam wholly supported – and had done his best to make one in – a bilingual household, despite his own unspoken reservation (shared by The Tommo, who was always ready to speak and voice that same reservation) that Liam, unlike Zayn (who had thrown himself seriously into learning fluent Urdu when first he contemplated fatherhood), was hardly fluent in _English_ as yet, and oughtn’t that to come first?

Then again, Zayn, as a rule, did not return – on a cold, wet, drear night which did no one’s temper any favours – from a council meeting, in a mood that made it clear, without want of asking, to anyone within miles, that it had gone poorly; and, as a rule, Zayn did not return from a council session ranting in English and Urdu (in its least polite register, and with a few choice words borrowed from Pashto and Mirpuri Pothohari).

Liam recognised a strop when he saw and heard one. And amongst the phrases of Urdu he had learnt _very_ early on, having a partner of Zayn’s temperament, were those for ‘Look out’, ‘Leave me alone’, and ‘Don’t _touch_ me’ – which always led in the end to that for ‘I’m sorry, forgive me, I love you’.

Being Liam, and having a temperamental partner he loved all the same (it was Zayn: how could he not?), Liam also well knew better than to back off and leave Zayn alone in his dark moods and dark places.

‘Which idiot did what this time, love?’

Zayn’s electric glare hardly softened as he rounded on Liam. ‘ _Allotments._ Bloody _allotments,_ would you believe? Some set of _fucking_ halfwits from _your_ County council and from _sodding_ Whitehall – this _fucking_ Government – incompetent, illiterate morons … apparently we aren’t meeting fucking _quotas_ for fucking _allotments_ here, and, Why not, and, Do we realise that under certain _fucking_ circumstances even a District council nowadays may if necessary be placed in “special measures”, and –’

‘ _Allotments?_ We’re a rural District of villages and hamlets and farms, in the bloody middle of a National Park!’

‘Do you think I didn’t _tell_ them that? Well done, though, you, recognising the fact, you’re cleverer than the other County councillors, and HM Government, and the bureaucratic jobsworths and jacks-in-office we spent two hours dealing with –’

‘I’d like to think so, yes,’ said Liam, evenly.

There was that in his tone which broke through Zayn’s tanty. Zayn had dedicated himself, for some years now, to making certain Liam knew – for all that Liam refused ever fully to credit the fact – that Liam was _not_ thick, that Zayn believed in him and _knew_ he wasn’t thick, that Zayn never once thought he was too clever to be tied down to a thickie.... The realisation that he had just undone decades of work on Liam’s self-confidence – or if he hadn’t it was by the mercy of the All-Merciful – simply because he, Zayn, was pitching a tantrum, literally brought him to his knees before his Liam, partly in supplication and partly because it felt precisely like a knife to the gut.

‘Oh, _jaan,_ no, _no,_ no, _mujhay maaf k-_ –’

‘’S all right, love.’

‘No, it isn’t, babe, I am so sorry, _please_ forgive me, I –’

‘Nothing to forgive. But, yeah, of course I forgive you. Wasn’t me you were angry with, anyroadup; doubt you even knew it were me you were ranting at.’

‘But –’

‘Next time ’round, it’ll be your turn on County council and me at Moorlands district, yeah? I’ll be the one ranting and raving about your lot – and puffing and panting –’

Liam’s eyes had crinkled with sheer fun – and pride in himself, which Zayn thanked the All-Beneficent he had not after all managed to destroy – at having stumbled into a musical reference which was undeniably clever. Zayn, although yet feeling the hot shame in his belly and his veins, could not help put grin up at him, that full grin of his, tongue behind his teeth and eyes crinkling in _precisely_ the same way as Liam’s were.

‘Much as I like you on your knees,’ said Liam, with what even now he thought a wink, ‘let’s get you up, shall we, before anyone walks in.’

As he pulled Zayn to his feet, he added, in a low tone that went straight to Zayn’s groin, ‘We can do the on-your-knees bit later.’

Zayn flushed a delicate shade, not from embarrassment but from avidity. ‘What – I mean, why not now? What could be better than –’

Liam cut him off, musically, before he could finish. ‘“Granny’s always ravin’ and rantin’, and she’s always puffin’ and pantin’...”.”

Zayn could not forbear to join in. ‘“And she’s always screamin’ and shoutin’, and she’s always brewin’ up tea –”’

It was as well that they had in fact both got to their feet, as the door banged open just then, and son Joe barged in with a brow of thunder, followed by a tearful sister, wee Karen. Joe was sporting a cut lip and bloody knuckles, and Karen was covered in mud.

‘What – _Karen,_ love, what happened –’

Fortunately, Molly (sensible, middle-child Molly) came in just then, grim but composed, as there was no getting answers of their youngest daughter, who had all she could do not to bawl outright, or their son and eldest, who was (like his baba not long prior) saying things in several languages which his dad was ready to cut off should he get any nearer the line of Things You Don’t Say In Your Sisters’ Hearing, Our Kid, Not _Ever,_ You May Be a Fourth-Former Now But You’re Not Too Old for Me to _Scrag_ You.

‘That Keates and Shufflebotham lot – and Emily Durkin – they....’ Molly stopped herself and took a breath. Like her dad, she was not always eloquent when enraged (although more so than was Joe, who really was Liam all over) – she left speaking wildly and saying unforgettably cutting things, afterward repented, to her baba, and, already, to a Karen who was all-too-precocious in that regard. Molly, like Liam, went cold and precise and frighteningly practical when furious. (Harry, who, between Lou and his own mirror, knew both sides of the coin, had observed that, although Zayn, like Lou, when pushed too far, contemplated an elaborate death for the offender, it was Liam who’d actually plan it out with an engineer’s attention to detail: to which Niall had always replied that Harry and Liam shared that serial killer’s stare.)

Quietly, icily, venomously, Molly went on, over wee Karen’s sniffles as Baba cleaned her up and Joe’s enforced mutterings: enforced by Dad’s ham of a hand over his mouth. ‘What they called her, I’ll not say: yes, and all of us.’ By and large, the families of Keates, Shufflebotham, and Durkin were upstanding pillars of the community, good farmers, active in local affairs, decent, kindly, and wholly admirable; but there is in every family a strain or line of black sheep, or wolves in their clothing. The Keates lads were bullies and worse, known to the police from a tender age; Gordon Shufflebotham and his brother Tone were regular in appearance before the magistrates; and Emily Durkin was well on her way to achieving a reputation to equal that of her vicious, poison-tongued slattern of a mother and that of her drunken, light-fingered gran, the most disreputable old trout in three parishes (she’d been a Wager by birth, so...). ‘Bigotry – racism, in fact – is one thing, but when they push smaller girls down and kick mud on them....’

‘Be a while before they do it again,’ said Joe, with a significant look at his split knuckles. ‘Or can do. When it’s hols in the Summer term, and I’ve my cricket bat handy –’

‘You’ll do nowt of the sort,’ chorused his fathers, sharply. ‘There are laws, and they’ll take their course.’

Joe was, it was clamantly evident, mutinous, but said nothing. It was perfectly obvious that he was thinking, _This_ is what comes of having parents who are councillors and JPs.... Joe had not inherited quite everything from Liam alone: if he did not forget hurts, he did not forget insults, either, and intended that every one should be avenged in time. What Joe overlooked was that he _had,_ after all, _inherited_ that long memory: and neither Baba nor Dad was at all likely to forget Joe’s incautiously admitted intentions, and should make damned certain he did not put them into effect.

Liam and Zayn shared a long look. Zayn nodded, barely perceptibly. It might be a bit shame-making, but it was necessary.

‘Do you know,’ said Liam, ‘I blame this weather for short tempers, neither one thing nor the other, it is, and so near to the holidays. Even your Baba lost his temper earlier.’

‘I did. And I was very wrong. Not to have lost my temper with those donkeys on the council, but: when I came home, I was so – out of control, like – I took it out on your Dad. I didn’t mean to, but I … I said some hurtful things.’ Zayn hung his head, even as Liam reached over and took his hand.

The elder children squirmed, and wee Karen, dashing the last tears away, ran to her Dad and hugged him.

‘But,’ said Liam, ‘it’s all come right, now. He apologised, and I forgive him, of course; and, when you came in – and let’s get all this mud and muck mopped up, shall we? – we were just going to –’

‘Dad, too much inf- –’

Liam glared Joe into submission.

‘I’ll get the mop,’ said Joe, wisely.

‘You do that, lad,’ said his dad, with that same warning evenness of tone he’d used to Zayn earlier. ‘And don’t be dirty-minded. For as then we’ll all gather ’round the Aga and get on with what your Baba and I _were_ about to start when you lot came home, because you’re in as much want of it as we were. Because. “Whatever the situation, whatever the race or creed” –’

Zayn, grinning, picked up the next line: ‘“Tea knows no segregation, no class or pedigree.”’

And as their children got to work cleaning the floors and themselves, their fathers swung into action, Zayn helping with the mopping and Liam putting the kettle on, and the both of them yet singing:

> _It knows no motivation, no sect or organisation,_  
>  _It knows no one religion, or political belief._  
>  _Have a cuppa tea...._

They had just got to the chorus – _Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah Rosalie_ – when a constable and a PCSO knocked rather diffidently upon the door.

* * *

Half an hour later, PC Critchlow and Alice Malkin, the PCSO, full of tea and buttered toast, and having made much of wee Karen (who really was a universal pet), took their leave, with a last word of advice to young Joe: ‘I’d likely have done the same in your boots, lad, and it were my sister and all, but, here’s the thing. It’s a deal harder to send a villain down when Chummy’s clever-dick solicitor, and maybe a barrister if it gets that far, can put up a lot of bol- – a deal of rubbish about how he were mistreated and walloped by someone else, you see.’

Joe nodded.

‘ _In_ formally, lad, I’m cautioning you not to be too ready with your fists, so as you don’t get on the wrong side of the law, whatever the provocation. All right, then? All right? Right. Just you leave this sort of thing to us, and _tell_ us when it happens, and we can nick that lot as we’ve been longing to do for sommat serious.’

PC Critchlow paused on the doorstep. ‘Much thanks again, sirs, and if the wee one wants anything.... All right: I hope, though, you’re well-founded, I think this weather’s on the change by morning. Well, just you ring us up if anything’s wanted, then, and good night all.’

* * *

Once the children were put to bed (Karen a bit clingy – which she was, really, a bit too old for, but which, as part of a general policy of acting younger than her age, tended to get her everything she asked: it was remarkable that the children were as unspoilt as they were, particularly when their grandparents were so besotted with them and indulged them in ways they’d never indulged Zayn or Liam or their sisters – but sufficiently exhausted to comply in the end), Liam quirked a half-smile. ‘Now,’ said he, ‘about that apology on your _knees_ bit, love....’

* * *

Hours after, Zayn slept on, the sleep of the absolved and the satiate. Liam, equally satisfied and as love-drunk as ever, did however rouse sufficiently to mark the change in the weather PC Critchlow had prophesied. Ice rattled against the old panes of the Georgian windows, underlining the warmth and peace withindoors. Liam snuggled more deeply yet into Zayn’s sleeping embrace – it really was like sharing a bed with the Hogwarts squid, thought Liam, fondly – and drifted back into dreams.

When he woke – the first, as always: the children had assuredly inherited Zayn’s extravagant love of slumber – he woke to a world transformed. The ice of the small hours had, thankfully, not lasted, and the dispiriting rain was hardly a memory: it was a white, pure, confectionery morning of snow.

Smiling, Liam got out of bed and padded to the kitchen to begin the appropriate preparations, and within half an hour was happily parading the corridors, singing (pointedly and aptly) to wake his family:

> _Tea in the morning, tea in the evening, tea at supper time,_  
>  _You get tea when it’s raining, tea when – IT’S **SNOWING,**_  
>  _Tea when the weather’s fine._  
>  _You get tea as a midday stimulant_  
>  _You get tea with your afternoon tea:_  
>  _For any old ailment or disease,_  
>  _For Christ’s sake have a cuppa tea._

And even his very own Zayn, despite the morning hour, could not help (helplessly in love as he was) to join in on the chorus, as the groaning children reluctantly awoke:

> _Have a cuppa tea, have a cuppa tea,_  
>  _Have a cuppa tea, have a cuppa tea,_  
>  _Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah Rosalie,_  
>  _Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah Rosalie._

* * *

4.

Zayn had not felt this ill since Haz-and-Tommo’s stag do. Or, rather, to be specific, the morning – and most of the afternoon – after. (Let it never be said Zayn Malik was incapable of learning by his mistakes: he’d damned well _paced_ himself at _Niall’s_ stag do, and a good thing, too, Niall’s idea of ‘one or two drinks and a wee bite-een of nosh’ being what it was.)

 _Oh,_ but he was ill....

There was, after all, a _reason_ why Zayn’s preferred response to cold weather – to any noticeable weather at all, really – was to curl up (preferably upon Liam), near the fire, with a book; and Liam was, reflected Zayn, almost bitterly, perfectly well aware of that. Liam, unfortunately, was also perfectly aware that Zayn could rarely say him no, and could say the children, home for the hols, no approximately never.

Zayn groaned, kicking at the duvet in an appropriately febrile fashion. Fat lot of good _that_ did him: here was Liam, all concern and affection, with a tray of abominable _hot_ food and drink, ranging from chicken korma, chicken karahi, and a chicken soup (with too much spice even for his favourite auntie) that Harry had come up with years ago, to noon chai and Liam’s own special holiday cocoa, a mix of white chocolate, dark chocolate, and peppermint, which somehow always managed to taste like love (and a Fry’s Peppermint Cream with white choc added) in a cup. Although, of course, it’d be heresy to use anything save Thornton’s chocolate in the Peak.

Even Zayn was not fretful enough to whinge about _that._ Well: not as yet.

‘You’ve a fever, love,’ said Liam, stating, thought Zayn, the bleeding obvious. ‘You want to stay warm and bundled-up all the same. Yes, and have your tray.’

Zayn groaned again, and, for good measure, gurned.

Liam was – lovingly – implacable and relentless. He brandished a silver bowl (trust Liam to manage the tray one-handed) with a corner of flannel peeping over the rim. ‘Sit up, love. I know you’re poorly.’

Zayn sighed as the cool, damp cloth was expertly wielded, soothing the fevered brow – and other parts.

‘Now, you eat what you can, and then I’ll give you a dose – get your mind out of the sewer, love, you’re too poorly for that just now – and you can kip a bit more, all right?’

Liam dropped a cooling kiss on that same fevered brow, and sat down in a nearby armchair with a copy of Gneil’s latest graphic novel.

* * *

Whether it had been the grub, the cocoa, the noon chai, or simply Liam, who had sung actual lullabies to him, the same lullabies as they’d sung to the children when small, or even had it been to the credit of Boots and Lemsip (and Zayn never wished to taste anything blackcurrant ever again, so long as he lived), Zayn was up and about and almost fully restored in health by the day next after.

Just as well: the children were, once reassured that Baba was healthy again, in mood of tearing holiday cheer, and with the energy to match.

It was on Boxing Day that Zayn noticed, guiltily, that Liam, although determinedly cheerful with family having descended upon them, seemed to be flagging a bit. For what must by then have been the nine-and-twentieth time in a very few days, he apologised for the extra work and the imposition he had, in his illness, put on Liam, who simply stared at him (for the nine-and-twentieth time) and insisted that there was no concept of ‘imposition’ as between them, in sickness and in health....

‘All right, babe,’ said Zayn (for the nine-and-twentieth time), ‘but I am going to make it up to you, like.’

‘I know, love,’ said Liam, with a smile of aching fondness which made them both wish fervently their families, friends, and indeed children might vanish far away for some time with a snap of the fingers. ‘I know you will.’

The day after that, with the house, fortunately, at last clear (bar the children, who were, fortunately, booked for much out of doors play in the mild spell which had set in), Liam did not wake before Zayn did; and when he did wake, it was with a groan which alarmed Zayn.

‘’M not feeling so well,’ said he, thickly; and coughed miserably.

And so Zayn got his chance to make things up to Liam after all. With a bit of help, naturally, from his mum’s book of recipes, the grocer and the butcher, and Boots.

… _for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part...._

* * *

5.

There were, reflected Zayn, even now a few hardy old Peak souls who could remember the Winter of 1947 (if only just), when ten-foot drifts had barred every way and the RAF had had to make emergency food drops in dirty weather to fend off actual starvation in Longnor.

Of course, nowadays he’d a daughter who could tell him precisely what happened day by day that year, and that Duke Ellington played Buxton the year after, and … well. Molly had always been clever.

All the same, he’d almost wish another Winter of ’47 on the land just now. Something which should force the cancellation of the annual Winter Picnic at Three Shires Head. Something which should prevent his children’s going back, all too soon, to school. Something which should prevent their filling the hols with (Molly) jaunts to archives and (Joe, of all people) hoping, the annoyingly moderate weather encouraging him, to poke about Lud’s Church. Something which should keep his children home, and children, forever.

He knew it was absurd, and pointless, and selfish; that it were, had it been possible, a betrayal of his duty as a father and a disservice to the children. (He also knew Liam, though sharing the same sentiment once in a way, should put a boot up his arse if ever he tried anything of the sort, and as for the children’s grandparents, well, they’d hang him for it – on a public gibbet, like, as Molly had been banging on about, Lingard of Tideswell, back in 1815....)

For some years, the only thing which seemed to interest Joe – aside from girls, in due course – had been cricket, which he played all too well (trust Yaser, like any proud grandfather, to nickname his grandson ‘Boom Boom’ from an early age). For those same years – contributing greatly, Zayn always felt, to the amount of (‘distinguished’, insisted Liam) silver which now frosted Zayn’s hair – the only thing which kept Joe at Repton had been his native cleverness, and the realisation that he wanted to scrape a pass in his studies if he was to continue his ascent to the 1st XI and a captaincy. Joe was – remained – the one member of the family who couldn’t sing a note, but, then, Joe was, and remained, the sort of lad who didn’t give a damn for any music save the ‘cricket pop’ of The Duckworth Lewis Method. (Which, admitted Zayn – if only to himself –, was better than Molly’s operatic and orchestral musical snobbery, which she tried loyally to hide from Baba and Dad, and streets ahead of wee Karen’s utter devotion to, yes, One Direction (all twenty-one albums and counting, God help them all).)

Hard to credit, thought Zayn, that he could now miss those days. Like his hearty father – oh, yes, he blamed Liam for Joe, wholly – Joe had finally found his interest. Bad enough that Molly was intending to read History, almost certainly at Cantab, at which she should unquestionably be offered a place in due time; bad enough that wee Karen was showing every promise of becoming quite as clever as her sister – English Lang. and Lit. was her speciality – and much better at hiding it, so as to keep everyone as twisted ’round her little finger as her grandparents and fathers were. Joe, though.... Even two years since, Zayn should have felt nothing but relief at the prospect that the boy might pull his socks up, get stuck in to his studies, and go to university rather than going straight into professional cricket, pursued as he was by selectors. At that time, Durham (that incubator of first-class cricketers) had seemed too much to hope for. Nowadays, though, there was every prospect of the lad’s being offered a place at Oxford (or, to be blunt, a chance at playing for OUCC at The Parks): and reading, Allah grant mercy and forfend it, Arch-and-Anth, or possibly History A&M, with the reasonable likelihood of at least a good Second. Joe, within two years, at Worcester ( _never_ Queen’s), or – _inshallah_ – up at Durham instead, which was at least nearer....

 _Damn_ this weather, thought Zayn, fretfully. And damn Joe’s enthusiasm for caverns and prehistoric remains, and _damn_ Molly’s inexhaustible fund of local history (if he were ever again subjected to a lecture on Lollards and Luddites alike, in their sundered generations, taking refuge in Lud’s Church chasm, he’d really not be responsible for his actions), and _doubly_ damn wee Karen’s insistence that Lud’s Church was the Green Knight’s Chapel in the tale of Sir Gawain....

‘Stroppy, there, Quiffy?’ Liam was damnably, horribly, appallingly cheery. ‘’S it the First Advent picnic, or are you mooning over how quick they grow up?’

 _Damn_ the man for his percipience. Zayn was trapped dead to rights: he could almost hear Blowers’ remembered tones (boyhood days with his father rapt before the wireless, listening to TMS) declaring him lbw, _absolutely plumb, my dear old thing...._

‘Love....’ Liam bent down and pulled him out of his sulks and his armchair and into a hug. ‘I don’t always like it meself, but they must grow up, and they _will_ do whether we like it or not. Dunna sprottle,’ added he, in imitation of a Moorlands farmer. Zayn glared: he _wasn’t_ sputtering and gibbering, he _wasn’t._ Couldn’t get a word in, in any case, with Liam doing his Sweet Reason turn: which he wanted to save for the children, Zayn wasn’t in want of coddling nor yet of gentle correction, blast it. ‘And it’s down to you they’re clever, and are going to be successful: you went and got _your_ MA, you did, even with the band and all.’

‘Open University,’ muttered Zayn. As a rule, he was proud of his degree and proud he’d persevered and got it, and wouldn’t hear a word against the institution which had made it possible; then again, as a rule, he wasn’t contemplating the prospect of a son at, possibly, Oxford in two years’ time and a daughter at Cambridge, assuredly, in three.

Liam knew – knowing Zayn as he did better than did any other human soul upon earth, the elder Maliks and their band-mates not excepted, let alone the sprogs – that the last thing which was wanted was a lecture on the absurdity of feeling jealous of one’s own children in their accomplishments. But something did want saying. ‘Love, you did it the hard way: if the band had never come to be, right, you’d be a don at Oxford yourself, and I’d be working down the Jag engine plant – and I know you’re not thinking we want to judge members of this family by their academic degrees and successes.’

Zayn blushed.

‘But you worked at it, balancing the band and _us_ and fatherhood and a degree, yeah? And why? So Our Kids had opportunities we hadn’t, their age and all. So it doesn’t matter a damn if Joe tries to be like Charles –’ the lordly head of the management company which had rescued them from the toils and talons of Modest – ‘and be a Fellow of All Souls _and_ a first-class cricketer, or Molly goes off to Cambridge and stops on and eventually becomes Mistress of Girton and Vice-Chancellor, or wee Karen in time sets the literary world by the ears: it’s all down to you, it is, whatever they accomplish.’

‘Us.’ Zayn cleared his throat, which had somehow acquired a lump in it for no reason he cared to identify. ‘Down to _us,_ babe. And maybe you more’n me.’

‘Never,’ smiled Liam.

‘Always,’ said Zayn, firmly.

‘Well, if you say so: you’re the MA. Now, can you face yet another Winter picnic?’

‘I can face anything, so long as I’m with you.’

‘Then you can always face anything.’

‘Well, bar Joe abseiling down cliffs to look out Fifteenth Century remains.’

‘Well, he shan’t today, and haven’t the council and all banned that for the sake of rare mosses or summat? So there’s no worry.’

There was no response to that – as to most things Liam said – save one. ‘I love you.’

Liam smiled, hefted the picnic hamper in one hand, and, with the other, took Zayn’s, intertwining their fingers in the old familiar comfort as he called for the children to shift their idle bums, it was time to leave, honestly, they’d been told half an hour before....

Another happy Christmas season had begun.

* * *

6.

Zayn had never, when young, expected that anything he might ever say should find a place in a list of popular quotations. (That he had at the same time dreamt of being a great teacher and a greater author, whose words might shine forever, simply indicated the perverse human capacity, always most notable in adolescence, for maintaining a firm belief in two mutually exclusive beliefs.) When he had been a little older, he had almost despaired – when he had time to dwell upon it, which was, fortunately, rare – that he should go down in history for certain lines, from ‘bit of a bromance’ to some lyrics, under their old management, which he simply writhed to recall.

The notion that he should ever have found himself in a heated public discussion, _on_ camera, _in_ a clip which went viral and led to his most lasting and respectful acclaim, arguing with a young, radicalised hothead and pronouncing what had become his most famous quote – _The only true jihad is the inner struggle of the soul for sakinah, you doughnut_ – had never entered his mind. (Nor had he imagined, ever, that he should be in such an argument, let alone that it should lead to one of the first successful prosecutions – undertaken by a reluctant CPS backed by a nervous and politically tortured constabulary – of one member of the _ummah_ for racially and religiously aggravated offences against another, under the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006: but, if Zayn were willing to take certain things directed against himself, he was damned well _not_ willing to accept insults to his parents – especially his mum –, his sisters, his children, and his Liam.)

Then again, even in those days, when he had achieved success as the world judged it and the greater success – yes, and indwelling tranquillity – of being Liam’s partner and a father to their children, a councillor and a local worthy, he had not foreseen _this._

God willing, Liam had the (eminently practical) words and (utterly practical) wisdom to say the right thing, because, Zayn knew, _he_ was at a loss, rather for having too many things to say at once than from having nothing to say.

Joe was uncharacteristically subdued, and uncharacteristically nervous. ‘I. I don’t … disappointing you is the thing I hate most.’

‘Dis- – _lad_. You’ve not disappointed us. Not at all.’

‘Dad.... I’ve disappointed half the sodding – half the _world_.’

‘Not _our_ half,’ said Liam, sitting down and pulling their strapping son into a loose hug.

‘It’s. Durham’s as good for cricket as Oxford, but … what it comes to is. Well. It has a better reputation in Archæology, these days.’

Zayn, whose knees were about to give up the unequal struggle and give out in any case, stumbled over and sat down on Joe’s other side. ‘You can’t think we object to your putting your degree first, even if there were _no_ cricket at Durham.’

‘Baba, my Housemaster and half the selectors think I’m daft. Not only because of the – the _glamour_ – of Oxford cricket. They can’t credit that Durham might, actually, in one discipline, peg level with, let alone do better than, their sacred Oxford-and-Cambridge. It’s not only the cricket: they know Nasser Hussain and Straussy were both up at Durham.’

‘Fuck ’em,’ said Zayn, succinctly. ‘You do what’s right for _you,_ beta.’

Liam shot him a swift smile. ‘Now, Joe lad, you leave off fencing with us. That _can’t_ be all that’s on your mind, or has you twisting your guts. We could never be disappointed in you over this, and I think you know that.’

Joe shot to his feet, and began to pace, his hands waving and his hair wild. ‘But it’s the last straw, isn’t it. I know Baba had come ’round to being – being _excited,_ and _proud,_ that I’d an Oxford offer, and of a place at Worcester at that.’ Zayn looked away, guiltily. ‘But it’s always been that way, hasn’t it, I’m a _dreadful_ son. So far as I chose anything, I chose being C of E, nominally, and disappointed all four of my grandparents – and Baba, though he won’t say it; I was a _clot_ for my first – for most of my years at school, until I found something that _interested_ me, it’s put most of the grey in Baba’s hair and likely caused you, Dad, to lose some of yours! You did your best to keep the paps away until I was in the Sixth, but they’ve made me an icon since, and – I only ever bring home _girls._ I –’

‘Did you _wish_ to bring home boys?’

‘No. And that’s the thing, isn’t it: I’m actually straight.’

Liam and Zayn exchanged a glance which reflected that each all too well recalled the ‘100% straight’ tweet of infamous memory.

‘And I know that’s a disappointment, too. A rejection.’

Zayn found his voice, then. ‘ _Never._ None of it has been. Come here, beta, and sit down.

‘When your Dad and I were first put in One Direction, do you know who the three most famous British Pakistanis were? A boxer; _me,_ to my surprise: I always thought there were plenty of cricketers who deserved it, not me; _and the Church of England’s retired bishop of Rochester._ You haven’t betrayed anyone – not even the loudest great-uncle, and certainly not Allah – by choosing as you did, any more than you’ve disappointed the Catholic members of the extended family. I _was_ proud that you’d qualified for an offer of a place at Oxford, but I and your Dad are a damned sight prouder that you’ve made an informed decision about your degree, yeah? And as for being straight … oh, Liam, _you_ tell him.’

‘Lad.... You’re not here to carry a flag, unless it’s the England and MCC colours in time. The whole _point_ is that people don’t choose their orientation. Your only obligation is to be Joe, the son we love and are proud of simply for being Joe: you don’t owe us, and you damn well don’t owe any community, sexual, religious, or ethnic, anything more.

‘Let me tell you. When your Baba and I had been together for a year or two.... It was in Modest’s day. This poor bugger from Bristol. What was his name again, love?’

‘Dewani. Shrien Dewani. _You_ always managed to call him as “Sherwani”, even when you were _wearing_ one. You doughnut.’

Liam shrugged, smiling. ‘You know I’ve trouble enough with English, love. Anyroadup, here’s this poor bugger. Desi like your Baba; but Hindu. All the same....’

‘All the same, he was gay. _Maybe_ bi. But with a clear preference. And he got married all the same, because – regardless of religion – he was Desi, and his family expected it, as South Asian families too often  _will_ do. Then his new wife was murdered on their honeymoon in South Africa, and the men who did the killing claimed he’d put them up to it.’

‘He were acquitted, though.’

Zayn’s gaze was fixed on a far point, perhaps the past at its most painful – and Payne-less. ‘Poor bastard. He. He was complicit in his own closeting until it all went pear-shaped. Because his fam _expected_ certain things.’

‘You know,’ said Liam, gently, ‘there were a time when your Baba were engaged to marry Perrie Edwards. In Modest days. After we’d escaped, and had new management – your Uncle Charles, you know – your Baba came out to your grandparents. And they’d knowed all the time, they had, and accepted it. Loved him all the same, didn’t they: because he _weren’t_ a disappointment, and he were their son, to be loved and supported.’

‘But the thing was.’ Zayn took a deep breath. ‘The thing was, Modest.... It came out later – it was one of the cards in Charles’ hand, and he is not a man to bluff – well, you’ve seen him at holiday whist drives when he … _graces_ … us with his ducal presence. After a year or two of licking their wounds and saying they were glad to be shed of us, Modest began, with HJPR, leaking what they could about us, they’d never forgiven our leaving. Went on for a few months, before Charles dropped the bloody nuke. Because what those bastards had done, in our last years with them, and Charles had the proof, was, They told your grandparents I was contractually obligated to go through that _farce_ of an engagement with Pez and they were telling _me_ that if I didn’t, they’d do worse than sue for breach of contract, they’d out me to my family, who’d force me to salvage the family _izzat_ by marrying her.’

‘But – that’s _blackmail,_ Baba!’

‘There’s a reason,’ said Liam, with dark, grim satisfaction, ‘why neither Modest nor Hackford Jones _exists_ any more. Charles is not to be trifled with.’

Zayn nodded, but was swift to return to the important point at hand, the only thing that could force him to relive these old hurts. ‘But, beta, mark this, like. If you think your Dad and I could _ever_ expect you to be other than your best self, and to go against your nature? Then we’ve failed you, and you don’t know us at all.

‘You take up that place at Castle, son, and you become the most respected bone-digger since Flinders Petrie or Pitt-Rivers, yeah? And then you go out and score more centuries than England has ever seen, and captain the side, and bring the Ashes home forever. Because you’re Our Joe – “Our Kid”, as they say in Wolvo –’ Liam, cheekily, put his tongue out at Zayn – ‘and being Our Joe is all that’s wanted for us to be proud of you, all right?’

Joe wisely eschewed words and threw himself into a hug with his fathers.

‘Don’t,’ said Liam, ‘let it wait. You go right now and accept that offer; and then, knowing as you’ll damn well be _responsible,_ you take the Rover and go tell your mates down the local. Be back by one – and ring us rather than _think_ of drink-driving, right?’

* * *

Once Joe was well away, and Molly on her latest _it’s not a date, Baba,_ and wee Karen sent, to her surprise and delight, to stop over for a night with her Best Friend (of this week, at any rate), Zayn looked at Liam with admiration and affection.

‘I can’t recall the last time we had an empty house of an evening in the Christmas hols.’

‘ _I_ can,’ said Liam, meaningfully. ‘And even in jest, love, when I put me tongue out at you, it’s more a promise than an insult.’

Zayn’s eyes darkened from affection to blazing lust, and he spun on his heel to race Liam up the stairs.

It was a large and meaty hand which pulled him back. ‘No, love, we’ll go up together,’ said Liam, and effortlessly lifted Zayn in his arms for the trek to the bedroom.

With his arms and legs wrapt around his Liam, and his face in Liam’s neck, and his hips unable _not_ to move of their own accord, Zayn hoped only that they’d _make_ it to the bedroom before he lost what little control he’d ever had around Liam … for decades, now.

* * *

The End ... For Now

 


End file.
